US man in al-Qaeda plot to kill Bush, court told

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Washington: An American man who spent 20 months in a Saudi jail
on suspicion of terrorism has been charged with conspiring to kill
the US President, George Bush, in an alleged al-Qaeda plot.

According to the indictment, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 23, conspired
with al-Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia to carry out the
assassination, either by getting "close enough to the President to
shoot him on the street" or with a car bomb.

The US lawyer leading the prosecution, Paul McNulty, said Ali
had "turned his back on America" and "now stands charged with some
of the most serious offences our nation can bring against
supporters of terrorism".

The indictment does not say what evidence the prosecution has
against Ali, other than the FBI's discovery of al-Qaeda literature,
gun magazines and general information about surveillance and
counter-surveillance at his home in Falls Church, a Washington
suburb.

The charges brought to the US District Court in Washington on
Tuesday provoked laughter from more than a hundred of Ali's
supporters, and were later rejected by his father, Omar, who said
they had been "cooked".

One of his lawyers, Ashraf Nubani, said his client had been
tortured while in a Saudi prison. "He has the evidence on his back.
He was whipped," the Associated Press quoted Mr Nubani as telling
the court.

Ali, who was born in Texas and came top of his high school class
in Virginia, was picked up by the Saudi authorities in Medina in
June 2003, a month after a wave of al-Qaeda bomb attacks against
residential compounds for foreigners in Riyadh.

His family and supporters mounted a lawsuit last July demanding
he be released or charged. They claimed his arrest had been
initiated by the US and that the US was keeping him in Saudi Arabia
"to avoid constitutional scrutiny by US courts". The lawsuit
triggered a court battle with the Administration over its use of
secret evidence against Ali.

Under legal pressure, the US State Department presented a formal
request to the Saudi Government last month either to charge Ali, or
allow him to be brought back to the US.